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Why do so many cookbooks these days include shots of bare skin?
A version of this post originally appeared in the May 12, 2024, installment of Dining In With Eater at Home, a newsletter highlighting the people, products, and trends inspiring how we cook now. Subscribe now.
By the time that Le Sud, the third cookbook from the Paris-based recipe developer and food stylist Rebekah Peppler, hit shelves at the end of April, I’d already spent months living vicariously through its digital galley. I was struck by its bounty of Provençal recipes, stunning photos of the French Mediterranean, and Peppler’s assured voice, but more than that, I was struck by the realization that the cookbook is… sexy.
It greets you with a photo of two naked, dripping-wet backs, fresh from a swim in the ocean. They set the tone for the rest of the book, which features numerous photos of Peppler, her partner, Laila Said, and their friends in repose, sometimes in swimwear; there are tanned stomachs and legs, an unassuming nipple visible through a shirt, and limbs casually draped over other limbs, all cast in golden light. The overall effect conjures the heady languor of a Luca Guadagnino film, and will do nothing to convince you that life is not better in Europe.
Le Sud displays bodies as lovingly as it does food and drink, a quality that I’ve been noticing more cookbooks strive to capture, with varying degrees of intention, in the past year. This spring has also given us Jess Damuck’s Health Nut, which frames Damuck’s bare midriff as the backdrop for carrot ginger saffron soup, a beet and black bean burger, and a creamsicle smoothie; and Sara Kramer and Sarah Hymanson’s Kismet, in which Hymanson’s toned abs illustrate a recipe for lamb skewers with carob molasses.
Last year, Molly Baz’s More Is More made a recurring motif out of Baz’s similarly sculpted midsection (and also gave the world a big photo of her bare foot in perilous proximity to a bowl of soup), and Please Wait to Be Tasted, the cookbook from Lil’ Deb’s Oasis, featured a photo of three people, naked from the waist up (and turned away from the camera) holding a coupe of coconut snow, the contents of which were also splattered across their skin. And then there was Alison Roman’s Sweet Enough, whose photos stitched together an alluring narrative of chill hedonism encapsulated most memorably by a tightly cropped shot of a shirtless man, furry torso and thighs crammed into extremely snug short-shorts, holding a strawberry cake whose presence felt somewhat incidental.
Considering the trend as a whole, it’s easy to conclude that a) cookbooks are hornier now; b) cookbooks are more joyously queer now, whether that’s a function of their author’s identity or how their text and photos capture glimpses of unshackled levity in the author’s daily life; c) some cookbook authors are just more comfortable showing off their bodies; d) most of those bodies happen to be female- and white-presenting, and all are young and slender; and e) of course cookbook authors, tasked with presenting readers with an aspirational vision of the good life, would want to include their own (outwardly) enviable health as part of that vision. A cynic might conclude that it’s all just very savvy marketing, and that this is where the cult of oversharing — not to mention the relentless pressure to monetize (certain) bodies in the name of capitalism — has landed us.
I thought about all of this earlier this week, when Molly Baz went on Instagram to publicize her so-called #bigtittycookies, a line of lactation cookies she’s selling. Last week, a billboard went up in Times Square in which she poses, visibly pregnant and wearing a bikini bottom and two strategically placed cookies. (Originally, the advertisement was slated to run for one week, just in time for Mother’s Day. But on Thursday, a representative from the billboard’s parent company flagged the ad for review and exchanged the photo for another picture from the campaign, according to the New York Times. In the updated image, Baz sits atop a kitchen counter wearing a crop top and jeans. She later took to Instagram to critique the decision, saying she felt “extremely disappointed but not at all surprised.”)
The ad was kind of silly, kind of upcycled Demi Moore on the cover of Vanity Fair, and kind of uncomfortable. Maybe the unenviable reality behind these tastefully filtered cookbook portrayals of our sexy, unburdened aspirations is that all bodies are just a little weird when they’re too close to food for comfort.
